1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a commodity-vending system and a weight-scale apparatus.
The present application is based on patent application No. 2007-030679 filed Feb. 9, 2007 in Japan, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.
2. Background Art
The present invention relates to a commodity-vending system and a weight-scale apparatus, and in particular, to a commodity-vending system and a weight-scale apparatus that undertake weight-scaling and vending of commodities in store aisles.
In western countries, perishable foods, e.g., vegetables and fruits displayed for sale in supermarket stores are usually categorized and stacked along store aisles. Customers put commodities they need into plastic bags free of charge and bring them to a cash register because a label indicating a price and a barcode is not attached to every commodity. The cash register registers the commodities by weighing each bag of commodity to retrieve unit price of the commodity and by operating preset keys provided to the cash register to obtain a subtotal price based on the resulting weight value multiplied by the unit price.
Also, a Patent Document 1 proposes a commodity-vending system having a pricing apparatus, provided at commodity showcase areas (store aisles), that issues a label indicating the weight of a commodity calculated by a customer who is going to purchase.
[Patent Document 1] Japan Patent No. 2,983,605
Incidentally, the preset keys used in a conventional method of commodity selection have a limit in number because an apparatus has a limited screen area to indicate the preset keys at a time; therefore, allocation of the preset keys corresponding to hundreds of merchandizing commodity variations must undergo, e.g. hierarchical categorization. Several times, e.g., three or four times of preset key selection that must be conducted until reaching the aiming commodity are problematic, i.e., time-consuming and complex in operation. Weighing and registering various commodities at a cash register, and issuing labels as previously described are problematic with respect to operability; thus, unpractical.
Commodity registration using a self-cash register, that expects widespread use in future, necessitating the aforementioned complex operations of the preset keys may be confusing to a customer who cannot find a preset key in mind.